


Smoke Rings

by Stranger



Series: Shire Reckoning 1412 [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, pipe smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 18:16:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16372625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stranger/pseuds/Stranger
Summary: Frodo and Merry spend an evening together before Frodo has to leave for Hobbiton.





	Smoke Rings

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place at the end of August 1412 (Shire Reckoning).
> 
> Written 2002.

The east smoking-room of Brandy Hall was both grand and cozy, a combination Merry Brandybuck preferred as much as any hobbit. The evening before Frodo's departure for Hobbiton and Bag End after his month's visit, Merry invited him to smoke a late pipe there in the quiet after supper, in front of the fireplace carved in the likeness of an open lion's mouth (as nearly as a hobbit stonemason, or any of the Brandybucks now alive, could picture it). The walls were covered with pictures of curious beasts, to which neither of the cousins paid heed, but the chairs were deep and soft and well-provided with footstools, which suited them both. 

Merry drew his pipe into glowing life and paused for a moment on the first bittersweet mouthful of smoke. He pursed his lips to blow a double smoke ring into the air between them. It rose slowly toward the wainscotted ceiling to slide away, dissipating, toward the two high, crescent-shaped windows.

"Very nice," said Frodo. "Bilbo couldn't have done better."

"There's an art to it," said Merry. "I saw Bilbo blow a triple ring more than once." 

"So he could." Frodo cradled the long-stemmed pipe between his fingers, its bowl still full under the top layer of criss-cross glowing strands. He sat with one neatly-combed foot on the footstool, one on the chair under him, staring into the fire and barely sipping at the pipe-stem. At length he said, "Cousin Saradoc is the best of hosts, but it will be good to be at Bag End for a bit." 

"I notice you're not taking Amber Hill-Burrows home with you," Merry observed, after some minutes of silence and contemplation.

"Ahh..." Frodo exhaled a neat but not gaudy smoke ring. "No."

"Mother was rather hoping you'd make a match of it."

"Your mother has estimable taste."

When Frodo made no further comment, Merry eventually blew an artistically ruffled smoke ring, an effect he liked, although it was not yet perfected. The ruffles tended to wobble. "Ah, well. Mother only wants... we all want to see you happy."

"Settled, do you mean? I feel I _am_ settled." 

"Alone." 

"Hardly. I've two Gamgees keeping the house and garden, any number of Bagginses and Boffins right in town, and occasional welcome visits by my very dear Brandybuck cousins."

"Is that an invitation?"

"Yes."

"I accept. Perhaps at your and Bilbo's birthday?"

"That would be an excellent time. Bring someone or two with you to stay for the fortnight."

"Amber? Acacia? Larkspur?" 

"You're taking after your mother, Merrikins."

Merry took the pipe out of his mouth the better to growl, "Don't call me that," but he couldn't make it sound enraged. If Frodo didn't wish to marry yet, he wouldn't. Despite a very affable and accommodating nature, Frodo knew his own mind.

Frodo smiled and blew two little round smoke rings side by side. They followed each other up the room's gentle updraft, first one leading, then the other, visible nearly until the windows caught them. "I'll leave the choice of companions up to you."

"Thank you, dear cousin. Perhaps I should bring Pippin."

Frodo chuckled outright. "You may, if you can pry him away from Acacia, Larkspur, Iris, Folco and Berry."

"Berry?" Merry blinked. "Pippin's keeping company with Berry?" Their mutual cousin Berilac Brandybuck was little more than a year away from his coming of age and his wedding to a long-time sweetheart. 

"Day before yesterday," said Frodo. "Don't say you weren't the same at his age."

"But I _wasn't_ the same! I fell madly in love with Arumlily, I'll have you know, and we were inseparable for weeks. Then I fell madly in love with Jasmine. Pippin is just..."

"A fast learner?" suggested Frodo.

"An incorrigible flirt. He's all... hither and yon."

"And up and down," Frodo said, smiling, and blew another neat smoke ring.

"And all around the mulberry bush," said Merry, exasperated. "He's over here enough that I had to give him the lecture -- the one Father gave me once -- about not tripping the servants... well, not our servants and at least not unless it's Festival or something."

"Quite," said Frodo hastily, and busied himself poking at something in his pipe-bowl with one of the ivory-handled picks from the smoking-room table's stoneware jar. 

Merry decided to ask anyway. "And how is Sam?" 

"Very well," said Frodo, and coughed. "Merry, don't say anything more. Sam is my friend, and his choices are entirely his own, I promise."

"I don't doubt that, Frodo."

A swift smile passed over Frodo's face. "You like him."

"Of course I like him! But folk will talk."

"Hobbits will talk even if there's nothing true to talk about."

The fire snapped as a log settled. Merry kept the next remark that occurred to him between his teeth. Instead he blew a lopsided smoke ring, and another, and finally achieved a pretty egg shape.

"Bravo!"

Merry accepted this tribute to his skill with a nod, and they were silent for another moment. Finally Merry sighed a stream of faint smoke and said, "Frodo, are you happy at Bag End, a bachelor?"

"I do quite well," said Frodo firmly.

"It's just... Mother may be too eager to pair you up with a Brandybuck or a Burrows, but well... You may be settled but you don't always seem happy."

"I do quite well."

Merry put down his pipe on a carved-stone mathom someone had gifted Saradoc at least a decade ago and leaned forward far enough to brush dark curls away from Frodo's forehead. "I suppose you don't look your age, but that's neither here nor there."

"Nor up nor down?"

Merry slid his fingers upward into the dark hair, stroking. "If we're speaking of ups and downs..."

"And ins and outs."

Merry caught his breath on a laugh. "You're worse than us tweens."

"Tweens are very invigorating company." 

"Finish your pipe," said Merry, feeling suddenly older than Frodo. "Finish it and come to bed. You need a night of looking after."

"I need a night of you. Thank you, Merry, I believe you're right." He sucked in one more mouthful of the aromatic smoke and made his two neat smoke rings, one after the other. Merry grinned and sent a third chasing them upwards toward the now-dark crescent windows.

There were some moments of tapping ash out of pipe-bowls and making sure all the stray crumbs were brushed into the lion-mouth hearth. "Leave the fire. It's burning down very nicely as it is." Merry set the fire-screen in place and put an arm around his friend. "Let's go to your room."

Their lips met briefly in a kiss that was almost chaste before they made the short trip to Frodo's bedroom down one hallway and up another, on the way saying goodnight to two yawning cousins and Uncle Merrimac, who winked at their clasped hands. The bedroom door finally closed between them and the other inhabitants of Brandy Hall, and Merry pulled his friend to him and set to unbuttoning his waistcoat while they kissed again, not chastely at all.

The bed was large enough for two and furnished with a goose-feather mattress. The two hobbits sank into it naked together, arms around each other, Frodo's thinner body beneath Merry's round one. Merry took possession of the willing mouth beneath his, but four eager limbs wrapped themselves around his body until he wasn't at all sure who was in possession of whom. 

"Shh, slow down," he murmured into Frodo's mouth. "We have all night."

"I want all night," said Frodo. "I want to be exhausted and sore at dawn. I want to spend the whole ride back to Hobbiton wishing I could sit on a pillow. I want to _remember_ this."

Merry rubbed his face over Frodo's, startled at his usually easy-going cousin, and matched other parts of their bodies to rub together as well in swelling warmth. "All night will be delightful, but it's a long day's ride to Bag End. You might rather go easier on yourself." 

"I can rest at home. I will. Not now." His legs were around Merry's waist already as he blatantly offered his body. 

"I won't deny you, my dear, but wait one moment." Merry was certain there was a dish of goose-fat here from last time he'd spent the night in Frodo's room, a night that had been slow and sleepy.

"You want the red-glazed pot. It's on the side-table, if you must. I'd have you without, you know."

"You'll think differently after an hour on your pony in the morning. I love you, you over-eager Baggins. I don't want to hurt you."

"Dear Merry," said Frodo, and wrapped both arms more tightly around Merry, far too tightly to let him search for anything outside the bed. Merry felt, when he brushed his cheek against Frodo's face again, that his friend's eyelashes were wet. 

"What's this...?" he wondered aloud. "You're not that sad to be leaving, are you? I'd come with you tomorrow if you want it."

"Dear Merry. Dear, dear, Merry, that's not what I need, but thank you. Just be about tonight's business, if you will." 

Merry kissed him, gently, and found the red-glazed pot, and teased him a little until he found just the right spot to spread a fingerful of the contents while Frodo gasped at every touch and demanded that he stop fussing, stop being an aunt, stop being so kind. Finally Merry fitted himself with spine-tingling slowness into the hot, barely-slick passage, pushing deep until Frodo cried out in satisfaction. 

The sound seemed to echo through their joined bodies, flaring pleasure through Merry so that he had to rock and thrust to answer the cry. Frodo groaned again and Merry answered with his body, unable to do anything but obey the wordless demands. When Merry climaxed in a hot gush, he felt another on his belly a moment later accompanied by a deep sob. "Oh, good, good," Frodo sobbed, clutching Merry with knees and arms and deep in his body. "Merry, stay."

Merry eased them both sideways in the hollow of the feather bed and held Frodo as tightly as he was being held. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, with you here." 

Merry was willing to believe that for the night. He shifted a hand to rub the back of Frodo's neck, smoothing around to the front and down his chest. "Rest a little and we'll do it all again. You'll wear me out."

Frodo chuckled. "I mean to. Am I being greedy?" 

"No more than anyone who's afraid of missing breakfast."

"Breakfast and lunch and tea..." sighed Frodo. "It's a long year, this year." He twined his fingers with Merry's and lay back, letting their bodies separate and find new relaxation. "You make it shorter." 

You're lonely at Bag End, thought Merry. You could have your pick of the Shire to wife, but you want something else. "You know I'll give you whatever you let me," he said.

Frodo reached to knead at his shoulders with unexpectedly strong fingers, finding the right spots with a lover's surety. It was soothing and arousing at the same time. "I know," he said, voice lighter. "You're very good to me. Do it again. Please."

# # # 

They slept through the dawn, but when they woke there was time to wash with the flowered porcelain jug and basin that had been Primula's, and dress before first breakfast. All the cousins who'd want to say good-bye to Frodo would be there. Merry knew his mother would make sure personally that Frodo was fortified for his day's journey with muffins and clotted cream and bacon and cheese and three kisses. Mother always said she didn't approve of Frodo, who lived _alone_ and was too thin by half, but she never stopped trying to plump him up.

Frodo's bags were already packed, nearly ready to take down to the stable to be loaded on Rumple, his pony. Pale sunlight lit the round window and made the room's walls and the rug underfoot glow gold and green, like a summer meadow. Merry borrowed Frodo's comb for a quick brush-through of his curls and made sure his face and hands were clean. 

Frodo grimaced as he put on his trousers. "I might lead Rumple for a mile or two before I try to ride. I'm not in any hurry, after all." 

The frantic passion of the night came back to Merry as a warmth deep in his belly and an ache in his heart for Frodo's disquiet. "I _will_ go to Bag End with you if you say the word."

"Dear Merry." Frodo gave him a sad smile and did up all his buttons. "Your mother would skin me like a piglet for the table, and she'd be right to do it. You have duties here." He picked up a comb and worked it over his tangled hair, peering at intervals into the square of silvered glass over the clothes-chest. "Keep an eye on Pippin. He has a good heart, but he's flitting around like a honeybee. He'll do mischief unawares if he lights on the wrong person."

"Don't," said Merry sternly, "say you weren't the same at his age." Privately he suspected that had been the case.

"Oh, but you weren't there, so you don't know." Frodo gave the comb a last tug down the back of his head and put one foot onto a stool to give it a careful swipe as well.

"I can guess."

Frodo swiped at his other foot and stowed the comb in his pack. "I'm not _always_ looking for... well, you may be right."

Merry put up an eyebrow. "Is it better if I think you're a wanton than that you're pining for someone else?"

Frodo gasped and turned to look at him. "I didn't say that."

"No, you didn't. It's the sort of thing one doesn't have to say to a friend."

"A friend who's given me just what I wanted. Thank you, Merry."

"I'll see you in a month." Merry grinned. "I may not have the same aches you do, but I'll remember it for a while."

"I'll miss you, that's certain." Then, suddenly shamefaced, Frodo said, "You're right. It's not only you that I miss. But you're the best friend I have." His eyes were clear in the window's sunlight. 

"Let's get you on the road for your home." Merry picked up the packed bags and led the way out into the summer morning, to the farewells that would send Frodo on his way.

# # # 


End file.
